Hi Brewers,I got a question about kegs.I bottle all my brew now ,but would like to start kegging.I was wondering how long it takes to condition beer in kegs?I brew only Ales,so no lagering for me yet .Usually I have to age my bottles of beer about 3 to 4 weeks.I was wanting to know what the timetable is for kegs.

Kegging saves you no conditioning time. Now, you can force-carb a beer in a short period of time (a few hours if you're determined enough), but you'll be force-carbing a green beer. It still will need the usual amount of conditioning time.

"I'm kind of toasted. But I looked at my watch and it's only 6:30 so I can't stop drinking yet." - Yooper's Bob"Brown eye finally recovered after the abuse it endured in Ptown last weekend, but it took almost a full week." - Paulie"no, he just doesn't speak 'stupid'. i, however, am fluent...." - motobrewer"... I'll go both ways." - Melana

Though... if the beer has been conditioned in the secondary long enough and or cold conditioned.. then you can pretty much drink it once it's carbed. That said, I still find them better about 10 days in.

Now I've opened a can of worms involving the neccessity of carbonic acid in order for a beer to really condition...

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I may not be an expert, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express........ 6 months ago.

"I'm kind of toasted. But I looked at my watch and it's only 6:30 so I can't stop drinking yet." - Yooper's Bob"Brown eye finally recovered after the abuse it endured in Ptown last weekend, but it took almost a full week." - Paulie"no, he just doesn't speak 'stupid'. i, however, am fluent...." - motobrewer"... I'll go both ways." - Melana

The bird is right on the money. The hardest thing about kegging is resisting the urge to drink the green stuff!

I totally had this problem when I started kegging with the 30PSI 3min deal to carb. I find that if I just put the keg in the rator with 12-13psi and leave it for a week or two, it'll be nicely carbed and I don't drink it greenish. Then again, I also keep a backlog now to avoid the whole deal.